The witch hunt against President Donald Trump and his supporters continues.
The Democrats’ Jan 6th committee is now demanding that 15 social media companies hand over their records.
The House committee probing the Jan. 6 riots is demanding over a dozen social media companies hand over extensive records related to the events at the Capitol.
The Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot sent letters dated Aug. 26 to Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, along with Parler, TikTok, 4chan and seven other social media platforms asking them to provide all documents, data and other information related to the Capitol riot since April 2020.
The committee requested documents concerning “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 election,” efforts to overturn the election, “domestic violent extremists,” and foreign influence. The committee also asked for internal documents and communications on how the social media companies’ algorithms may have contributed to the events at the Capitol.
“The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is examining the facts, circumstances, and causes of the attack and relating to the peaceful transfer of power, in order to identify and evaluate lessons learned and to recommend corrective laws, policies, procedures, rules, or regulations,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chair, said in a statement.
The 15 social media companies are.
-4chan
-8kun
-Gab
-Parler
-Snapchat
-Telegram
-theDonald.win
-Tik-Tok
-Twitch
-YouTube
-Zello
This comes after even the FBI was forced to admit that there was “scant evidence” that Jan 6th was coordinated.
The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.
Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
Gab CEO Andrew Torba responded to the committee with this letter:
Yesterday evening Gab received a letter from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Protest at the United States Capitol.
By way of further background about our company, Gab exists to promote freedom of speech, by which we mean all speech which is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No more, no less.
Accordingly we have a zero-tolerance policy towards threats of violence and unlawful speech. As to controversial but nonetheless legal speech we believe, as Justice Brandeis did, that “sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman.”
We have been boycotted by virtually every company in Silicon Valley because of our adherence to this moderation policy. In their zeal to bend to “woke” political agendas or outside pressure groups, our contemporaries in the Valley forget the social importance of letting off steam and of exposing bad ideas, and bad people, to public scrutiny.
As we are a free to use online publishing platform, it is inevitable that criminal actors will seek to abuse our services, as indeed they abuse all online services. We work hard to ensure that our services are denied to these bad actors.
For example, in the lead-up to the inauguration, we were made aware of a number of accounts which sought to spread division and fear through the use of unlawful threats. All accounts of this type that have been discovered have been banned on discovery, including at least one account which published threats against a number of U.S. election officials and was the subject of significant media coverage, including media coverage which incorrectly stated that we failed to take action against the subject account.
We look forward to getting in touch with the Committee in the coming weeks especially given the recent news that the FBI has found “scant evidence that the Jan. 6 event at the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.”
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
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